Bridge Project is dedicated to exposing the conservative movement’s dishonest tactics, dismantling its extreme ideology, and shining light on the moneyed special interests that fund it.

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As we look back on this week, four days into the government shutdown, an unlikely bipartisan consensus has emerged in Washington: Extreme Tea Party Republicans are to blame for putting hundreds of thousands of people out of work and depriving millions of services they depend on.

It is clear to objective observers that while Democrats have already compromised by swallowing post-sequester funding levels they despise, intransigent Tea Party Republicans refuse to budge from their position. The Republicans’ so-called leaders are unwilling to allow a vote to fund the government at current levels, which would pass, unless they can strip funding away from the Affordable Care Act – funding that has already been appropriated by Congress and is unrelated to the bills currently being debated.

Conservatives’ irrational and unreasonable approach to governing has resulted in a circular firing squad within the GOP. Whether publicly on television, or behind the closed doors of the Senate’s Mansfield Room, nervous Republicans are blaming their own for the current mess in Washington.

Issues

Politicians & Pundits

Today, the Bridge Project is releasing this video in response to the misleading Crossroads ad on Benghazi. Called, “Karl Rove’s Decade of Deception,” the video highlights Rove’s dangerous habit of misleading the American public on matters of national security – just to score political points. From selling the war in Iraq, fudging intelligence, Valerie Plame, and the new Crossroads ad on Benghazi, Rove has been deceiving Americans for more than a decade.

Organizations

Politicians & Pundits

During an October 20, 2012, Stand Up For Religious Freedom Rally in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said:

FOXX: We are allowing our freedoms to be eroded a little at a time. We now have very clearly a position that wants to take our most basic freedom away from us. If we allow that to happen we are literally cooked, because the rest of the freedoms will go away also. So we’ve got to stand up for it, we have got to make sure that we do the right things. I have often made this little speech on the floor of the house because I feel so strongly about this and I have for a long time. There’s another way to consider the significance of the time we’re in, and you might be able to convince some unbelievers by using the words of German pastor Martin Niemoller, and again, many of you will know this. “First they came for the socialists and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.” Folks, that’s where we are. That is where we are. So we have to speak up for our fellow Americans, those who may not understand the significance of the situation that we’re in. We want our children and grandchildren to enjoy a free America that continues to protect the rights of conscience. And it is up to us to make sure that that is the country that we leave to our posterity. If we allow the freedom of religion to be undermined then all the rest of our freedoms are gone.

Issues

Politicians & Pundits

In an interview with the Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas, Bishop E.W. Jackson said:

President Barack Obama is not a Christian. He’s not a Christian. Now it’s just that plain and simple. You say, “Well who are you? How do you have the right?” Well the Bible says, “By their fruits shall you know them,” and it’s clear from everything he says and everything he does that Christianity is not part of his thinking. The proof is there for anybody who wants to see it so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to us. For example, he stood in Cairo and said we’re not a Christian nation. Now what Christian thinks of America and wants to declare to the Muslim nations we’re not a Christian nation? He has said he doesn’t believe the Bible, they are esoteric texts that he doesn’t bother with because those couldn’t possibly be right. He said we should all admire same-sex marriage. Now the Bible condemns it. Doesn’t condemn the people but it condemns the behavior. He says we should admire it. So that means he thinks he’s obviously smarter than the Bible and smarter than God. Now, no Christian, even if we don’t quite live up to all that the Bible calls us to do, is gonna stand up and say, “Well, I’ve got a better idea, and we ought to think about it this way rather than that way.”

Politicians & Pundits

From Rick Santorum’s remarks at a Family Policy Institute of Washington dinner on October 9, 2012, in Spokane:

They asked about the issue, one of the questions, about equality. My response to him on the issue of equality, which you are going to be hearing, marriage equality: Are all things equal? Is everything equal to everything else? Or are there differences? Are some things better than other things? Are some things more worthy of support than other things? Equality is a great term, just like freedom is a great term. But in excess it undermines the virtue that each is. The greatest threat to freedom is unbridled freedom. Everybody going out and doing whatever they want to do. Red light, green light, I don’t care, I’m free. The greatest threat to equality is equality that shows no discernment, has no basis for value.

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Politicians & Pundits

At a Freedomworks “Call to Action” Rally on September 15, 2012, Ohio Liberty Council President and Portage County Tea Party Executive Director Tom Zawistowski said:

ZAWISTOWSKI: So my question to you is, are they going to win this election? Are we going to win this election? Who’s going to win this election? We are! Who’s going to win this election? We are! About a week ago I sent out an email to all the patriot leaders in Ohio to give to their members. In that email I said that we all need to fight this war as if we’re the only ones in it. We need to fight this war in our hometown the best way we know how. Not to listen to anybody else, but to see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears and do the things we know that will win this election. And if we do that, I have no doubt that we’re not just going to win this election, we’re going to blow their doors off. And we’re going to reject— Our goal is to reject the progressive liberal statist agenda, and tell them they have no place in American society, and we need to kill them like the cancer that they are.

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Politicians & Pundits

From Rep. Paul Broun’s (R-GA) remarks at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet on September 27, 2012, in Hartwell, Georgia:

BROUN: God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.

And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.

Issues

Politicians & Pundits

From a September 25, 2012, appearance by Newt Gingrich on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren:

GINGRICH: For 10 days after the Benghazi attack, the Obama administration denied it was a terrorist attack.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN (HOST): That’s a different issue.

GINGRICH: No.

VAN SUSTEREN: That is a profoundly different issue.

GINGRICH: But after Carney that morning said, ‘Okay everybody now concedes it’s a terrorist act,’ the same afternoon, Obama went back to the, ‘Oh, it’s really caused by the film.’ I think it’s because he wasn’t coordinating.

VAN SUSTEREN: Well, he was talking about the film today, which was sort of interesting. He’s talking about the video before the U.N. in his speech and talking about how, you know, we don’t insult the—we should not tolerate insulting religions, yet there was no mention of the fact that Ahmadinejad is going to be speaking tomorrow on the holiest day of the Jewish faith, Yom Kippur, so that he spoke about the insult to the Muslim world with this video, but he neglected to talk about the insult to Jews, while he’s dissing the prime minister of Israel.

GINGRICH: Well, it’s worse—From an American perspective, it’s worse than that. Obama spent I think three paragraphs on a nutcake film that nobody had seen. Meanwhile, in the same city as Cardinal Dolan, who has openly said the Obama administration’s waging war on the Catholic church. Now why is Obama fixated on appeasing Muslims while attacking Catholics? And why is that not a topic that ought to be on every network talk show? I mean here’s a president who is a one-sided apologist for Islamic extremists while he is attacking Christianity in his own country. It’s pretty bizarre.

Politicians & Pundits

SOUTHERLAND: What I believe the governor was trying to get across, as I listened to his video, is that we want a system of earned success where people are rewarded for their effort, they’re rewarded for their merit, they’re rewarded for their sacrifice and their hard work. And I think that that is clearly the fairest system ever known by mankind. Not a system where we have, you know, economic— we talk about economic fairness, where the government determines fair. I think what is more fair, and what is more moral, than a system of earned success? And I think that’s what the governor was alluding to.And clearly, Barack Obama, and you look at his body of work, he does not believe in that. He believes in redistribution, and I think that is evil, and I think it is wrong.And I think it’s glaring that he’s now getting more bold with his statements, because I think he knows there’s a great chance he could lose this election.

Politicians & Pundits

From a September 19, 2012, interview with Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalf (R) on KDKA’s Mike Pintek show, via ThinkProgress:

METCALFE: Ultimately, the burden isn’t on the state to make sure every individual does what they have to do to get their ID card. I mean, individuals have certain responsibilities in securing their ID. They have to present the documents needed. The state doesn’t have that burden. I think the individual does, and I think it ultimately is a great travesty of justice to violate the rights of millions to have their legally cast vote protected for the special interests of a few individuals that are too lazy to get out there and get done what they have to to get their ID card.

MIKE PINTEK (HOST): Okay, are you absolutely convinced, and do you have assurances and can you give us assurances that the methods to implement this law are effective and will in fact make sure that no legitimate voter will be disenfranchised?

METCALFE: Yes. I don’t believe any legitimate voter that actually wants to exercise that right and takes on the according responsibility that goes with that right to secure their photo ID will be disenfranchised. You know, we have – as Mitt Romney said, 47 percent of the people that are living off the public dole, living off of their neighbors’ hard work, and we have a lot of people out there that are too lazy to get off and – you know, to get up and get out there and get the ID they need. So, I mean, if individuals are too lazy, the state can’t fix that.